Various machines are known for the production of electro-welded mesh, each one consisting of a plurality of longitudinal metal wires or round pieces, distanced from each other, on which corresponding transverse metal wires or round pieces are welded perpendicularly and according to a pre-determined interaxis.
Such machines generally comprise at least an assembly to feed and advance the longitudinal wires, an assembly to feed the transverse wires, means to position the transverse wires in the attachment position and a welding assembly by means of which the longitudinal wires and transverse wires are associated.
The functioning of such machines provides that a transverse wire, in some cases several transverse wires at the same time, is fed and arranged in an attachment position in which it is joined to the longitudinal wires by means of the welding assembly.
Subsequently the longitudinal wires are made to advance simultaneously by a pitch equivalent to the interaxis between the transverse wires, so that a new transverse wire can be fed and arranged in the attachment position.
One of the main limits of such machines is their low productivity, caused by the need to feed the transverse wires at a certain distance from the welding assembly, and then move them to the attachment position by means of the positioning means.
This entails long downtimes due to the traveling time of the transverse wires in the feed step, since the front end of the wires has to pass through the whole width of the machine, and also due to the subsequent movement of the transverse wires to the attachment position.
Some conventional machines, an example of which is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,457, provide that, while a first transverse wire is moved to the attachment position by the positioning means, a second transverse wire is fed and kept in a preparation position, near the attachment position, waiting to be subsequently taken to the latter.
While such solutions have allowed a partial reduction in downtimes, they have not allowed to reach satisfactory levels of productivity, since the times needed for the positioning means to travel from the attachment position to the preparation position and vice versa are still too long.
The present Applicant has devised and embodied this invention to overcome the shortcomings of the state of the art and to obtain further advantages.